The present invention relates generally to the field of object oriented programming models, and more particularly to the implementation of interface method resolution in object oriented programming models.
In object oriented programming (OOP) models, interface (also known as protocols) provide a mechanism for multiple inheritance of specification, but not implementation. This provides a common means for unrelated objects to communicate with one another. Interfaces are explicitly implemented in a variety of OOP models such as Java, C#, and Objective-C. In various OOP implementations, interfaces may be implemented by virtual method pointers, which relate the interface method names to their corresponding implementations in each class.
It is well-known by software engineers working in Java and related models that the required search step for interfaces is time-costly as compared with strictly class-based solutions such that interfaces continue to be disfavored.